Join the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department for the first seminar of 2011: “Platelets, Coagulation and Cancer Metastasis: a Sticky Situation in the Blood” at 10:45 a.m., Thursday, March 3 in room 301 of Shaffer Hall at the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University. Owen J.T. McCarty of Oregon Health and Science University is the invited speaker.

McCarty serves as an assistant professor at OHSU in Portland in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Cell and Developmental biology. He studies the interplay between cell biology and fluid mechanics in the cardiovascular system. His investigation into the balance between hydrodynamic shear forces and chemical adhesive interactions could shed light on the underlying processes of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and inflammation.

An alumnus of Johns Hopkins University, McCarty’s 2002 Ph.D. dissertation in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering focused on the role of platelets in cancer metastasis and thrombosis. At the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford University and Centre for Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK, he continued his research as a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow in the area of thrombosis, examining the signaling pathways that rule platelet cytoskeletal reorganization. McCarty’s talk is co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Physical Sciences Oncology Center.

The results of common and routine blood tests are not affected by up to 40 minutes of travel on hobby-sized drones, a recent proof-of-concept study at Johns Hopkins demonstrated, promising news for the millions of people cared for in rural and economically impoverished areas that lack passable roads. In developing nations, most tests on blood […]